Caterpillar revealed as a moth, not a butterfly

In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stood on the floor of the Electro-Motive Diesel plant in London, Ont. and announced tax breaks to keep manufacturing jobs in Canada. With $7 billion of orders and a highly profitable balance sheet, the workers at Electro-Motive seemed to be fulfilling the North American social compact: be productive, profitable and receive a lower middle class wage.

This New Year's Day, Caterpillar locked out its employees in London after they refused a 55 per cent wage cut. According to the American corporation, the $35 an hour most employees were being paid was an “unsustainable” wage. On Friday, the plant was shut down. Let the pundit wars begin. Writing for Postmedia, Andrew Coyne called Caterpillar, “bastards: greedy, heartless.” (Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen)

The awkwardness of youth: it’s all in your head

Looking at the teenage mind, Alison Gopnik tries to make sense of the weirdness of our youth and how it is being made worse. Asking the tough questions: “How does the boy who can thoughtfully explain the reasons never to drink and drive end up in a drunken crash? Why does the girl who knows all about birth control find herself pregnant by a boy she doesn't even like?” Gopnik looks at the chemistry of teenage brains. (Wall Street Journal)

Reinventing the CBC by abandoning TV

What if the CBC were to pull out of the television business completely? Local blogger Fagstein asks that question and muses about what would happen if the public broadcaster set its sights on conquering the web. Spurred on by a video from Kai Nagata, the former CTV Quebec City bureau chief who publicly quit his job last July, Fagstein seems open to the idea.

A very public fight after the Sun TV immigration ceremony

Jennifer Ditchburn of the Canadian Press, who reported on Thursday that a fake oath ceremony had been carried out live at Sun News Network with federal bureaucrats used as stand-ins, had to face Sun’s Ezra Levant on Twitter. The fight is silly, hairsplitting and raises questions about ethics.

The dummy’s guide to Super Bowls through time

If you have a Super Bowl party tomorrow and aren’t too sure about the history of one of the year’s biggest sporting events, La Presse has you covered. Slide-by-slide, the French newspaper put together a beautiful and easy-to-read infographic of every match-up since Vince Lombardi first celebrated his win at Super Bowl I in 1967.

A note to Yellow Pages

Yellow Pages hasn’t had a good year. Jobs have been lost and pictures have continued to circle the internet of piles of unused, grotesquely water-soaked books. Now one dissatisfied Canadian on Reddit is going after the company’s bottom line. Yellow Pages Income Trust is trading at $0.18 a share. (Reddit)

Photo: CAW Media via Flickr (http://opnfil.es/xYf82B)